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I've often wondered about things like this, I've wondered if improving medical technologies like this end up disadvantaging the poorer countries. If by increasi

by xupybd 11y ago

I've often wondered about things like this, I've wondered if improving medical technologies like this end up disadvantaging the poorer countries. If by increasing the life span of the wealthy west we pull more resources away from the rest of world? It seems as we get better at keeping ourselves alive we require more and more to do so. I have no idea if I'm even close to correct in my speculation, but I bring it up as the Gates foundation investing in this seems to go against my hypothesis.

maxerickson 11y ago
This sort of test can reduce the cost of treating cancer. I saw a thing about it on the TV, the false positive rate is low, so it makes it possible to intervene earlier, which is a significant factor in treating cancer. It also identifies what mutations are involved in the cancer, which may help in choosing effective treatments.
hkmurakami 11y ago
Well presumably the beneficiaries of a cutting edge technology like this is going to be the upper echelons of the developed world. The spoils of the productivity gains and economic growth in the developed world go to the knowledge worker and capitalist classes in the developed world, and the recipients of outsourced work in the developing world. So one hypothesis would be that increased lifespan of the wealthy in the developed world will increase the spoils the developing world will have access to. Just a straw man of course.
ThomPete 11y ago
As long as the solutions can be digitalized or automated via technology it will always be to the benefit to everyone else. (unless it requires some rare materials of course)
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  As long as they can be "digitized or automated" and as long as we make sure IP restrictions won't get in the way.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    Hehe sure that to, but even over time it will be less of an issue.
seizethecheese 11y ago
If the problems in Japan over the last few decades are any indication, keeping people alive longer will not advantage rich countries in an economic sense. People will continue to retire in their sixties and live longer with progressively more expensive medical treatment. Not exactly a road to riches, although riches aren't everything.
- adventured 11y ago
  Most of Japan's problems have nothing to do with demographics. That's just a fraudulent cover story used to hide the keynesian disaster. Debt and incompetent public spending that has been asphyxiating the private sector through malinvestment, has been the core problem (to go with continually bailing out zombie corporations). They loaded up on both debt and public spending since ~1990, and they got negative net real GDP out of it (even while their population increased). Germany by contrast has seen zero population growth over 40 years and did not have similar growth (or debt) problems of the sort that Japan created for itself. Germany's GDP has increased nominally by 750% over those 40 years (their economy also tripled in size in the 15 years before the Berlin Wall fell, with zero population growth). If demographics mattered that much, Germany's economy would be - and would have been - a disaster like Japan's is.
horsecaptin 11y ago
No, because Western countries' populations aren't going up in the same way that poorer countries' populations are.
stvswn 11y ago
The premise of your hypothesis is that resources are zero-sum, when globalization, modern capitalism, and scientific progress have made this moment the greatest for poor people in all of human history. At the same time, the rich have gotten richer. To answer your specific question, whether rich people living longer is good for poor people -- it would be, because those longer-living rich people aren't just consuming more, they are creating more. In other words, if we aren't losing as many people from cancer, our productivity goes up, and wealth abounds in all areas of human endeavor. If an engineer in Kansas didn't die of cancer, maybe he'll go on to invent a new method of soy cultivation that brings prices down and saves lives in Africa. I think that to deny that health, life, thriving are good things, one must believe that humans are liabilities instead of assets. But they aren't. Humans aren't sandbags on human achievement, they are a necessary input.
Grishnakh 11y ago
WTF? You don't think that cheaper technologies are going to be available to other countries? How much do we spend on cancer in the US alone? It's astronomical. If a simple blood test can catch it faster, that's going to save us a bunch of money, and increase productivity (people living longer). Why would this not also benefit third-world nations? It'll probably have a bigger effect there because instead of people dying because they can't afford expensive treatments for later-stage cancers, they'll be able to get cheap treatments early on and live. This complaint of yours sounds like someone in 2006 saying "we shouldn't have these smartphones because people in poorer countries can't afford them, and it'll give us too many productivity and economic advantages over them". Meanwhile, here in 2015, everyone and his brother in India and China has a smartphone, and in fact third-world nations in general have done a much better job of pushing cellular technology to the masses than the US has, thanks to our telecom cartel which keeps service plan prices absurdly high.
- xupybd 11y ago
  I'm sorry I didn't mean to offend. My comment was not meant as a complaint, or a statement of fact, but as wild speculation. It was my hope that by voicing such wild speculation I'd learn something, and I have. In no way do I think it's a bad idea to seek better medical treatments ever, I just worried that it might further the gap between the haves and the have nots. If one solution creates another problem sometimes best solution can be to fix the new problem.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    Sorry if I was a bit harsh, but it just seemed to me that your comment seemed a bit like some schools of thought which basically amount to "no one should have any advantages over anyone else because it's not fair, so we should handicap everyone to the same level", but with nations instead of individuals. Or maybe "we shouldn't implement any new technologies until we can make them equally available to everyone worldwide". The thing is, if you look at new technologies, they've revolutionized things not only here in first-world nations, but in thirld-world nations too. Phones are a prime example of this: a few decades ago, there were lots of 3rd-world nations where they didn't have widely-deployed telephones. The US and Europe had them of course, because they had spend oodles of money over many decades installing twisted-pair copper lines everywhere, giving us 1950s-level phone tech. Then along came cellphones, and they were expensive at first, so only businesspeople (like realtors) and rich people bothered to pay for them. Should the US have held back deploying cellular infrastructure, in order to wait for the 3rd world countries to deploy basic twisted-pair POTS? Heck no. Because after a decade or so, the costs came down so much and phones got so cheap that the 3rd-world nations just went ahead and installed cell towers everywhere, and skipped landlines altogether. There's a lot of 3rd-world nations with better cellular coverage than a lot of places in America! It's a lot cheaper to install a cell tower to service hundreds of people than it is to install twisted-pair wiring to hundreds of homes, so that's exactly what they did: they took advantage of superior and less-expensive technology to catch up with the developed nations faster. It would have been stupid and wasteful for them to deploy the older POTS technology. It's like that with all technologies: costs get driven farther and farther down, and people in developing nations are able to take advantage of that, so those economies are improving rapidly, and the quality of life in those nations is rising greatly. The way I see it, this "gap between the haves and the have nots" is not a problem, and doesn't even exist, if you're looking at a worldwide scale. It is a problem here in the US because things are so corrupt and broken, but that's an entirely separate issue. For the most part, things are improving a lot for people in developing nations, with some obvious exceptions in the Middle East.
peter303 11y ago
Take AIDS for example. While drugs remain expensive in the USA on the order of a $1000 a month, they are less than $200 a year in many poor countries, thanks to Bush laws and Clinton Foundation. Still they are reaching less than half the infected people due to broken local governments and money shortages. However we have several million people living when they would have miserably died.

by xupybd 11y ago

maxerickson 11y ago

This sort of test can reduce the cost of treating cancer. I saw a thing about it on the TV, the false positive rate is low, so it makes it possible to intervene earlier, which is a significant factor in treating cancer. It also identifies what mutations are involved in the cancer, which may help in choosing effective treatments.

hkmurakami 11y ago

Well presumably the beneficiaries of a cutting edge technology like this is going to be the upper echelons of the developed world. The spoils of the productivity gains and economic growth in the developed world go to the knowledge worker and capitalist classes in the developed world, and the recipients of outsourced work in the developing world. So one hypothesis would be that increased lifespan of the wealthy in the developed world will increase the spoils the developing world will have access to. Just a straw man of course.

ThomPete 11y ago

As long as the solutions can be digitalized or automated via technology it will always be to the benefit to everyone else. (unless it requires some rare materials of course)

TeMPOraL 11y ago
As long as they can be "digitized or automated" and as long as we make sure IP restrictions won't get in the way.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Hehe sure that to, but even over time it will be less of an issue.

seizethecheese 11y ago

If the problems in Japan over the last few decades are any indication, keeping people alive longer will not advantage rich countries in an economic sense. People will continue to retire in their sixties and live longer with progressively more expensive medical treatment. Not exactly a road to riches, although riches aren't everything.

adventured 11y ago
Most of Japan's problems have nothing to do with demographics. That's just a fraudulent cover story used to hide the keynesian disaster. Debt and incompetent public spending that has been asphyxiating the private sector through malinvestment, has been the core problem (to go with continually bailing out zombie corporations). They loaded up on both debt and public spending since ~1990, and they got negative net real GDP out of it (even while their population increased). Germany by contrast has seen zero population growth over 40 years and did not have similar growth (or debt) problems of the sort that Japan created for itself. Germany's GDP has increased nominally by 750% over those 40 years (their economy also tripled in size in the 15 years before the Berlin Wall fell, with zero population growth). If demographics mattered that much, Germany's economy would be - and would have been - a disaster like Japan's is.

horsecaptin 11y ago

No, because Western countries' populations aren't going up in the same way that poorer countries' populations are.

stvswn 11y ago

The premise of your hypothesis is that resources are zero-sum, when globalization, modern capitalism, and scientific progress have made this moment the greatest for poor people in all of human history. At the same time, the rich have gotten richer. To answer your specific question, whether rich people living longer is good for poor people -- it would be, because those longer-living rich people aren't just consuming more, they are creating more. In other words, if we aren't losing as many people from cancer, our productivity goes up, and wealth abounds in all areas of human endeavor. If an engineer in Kansas didn't die of cancer, maybe he'll go on to invent a new method of soy cultivation that brings prices down and saves lives in Africa. I think that to deny that health, life, thriving are good things, one must believe that humans are liabilities instead of assets. But they aren't. Humans aren't sandbags on human achievement, they are a necessary input.

Grishnakh 11y ago

WTF? You don't think that cheaper technologies are going to be available to other countries? How much do we spend on cancer in the US alone? It's astronomical. If a simple blood test can catch it faster, that's going to save us a bunch of money, and increase productivity (people living longer). Why would this not also benefit third-world nations? It'll probably have a bigger effect there because instead of people dying because they can't afford expensive treatments for later-stage cancers, they'll be able to get cheap treatments early on and live. This complaint of yours sounds like someone in 2006 saying "we shouldn't have these smartphones because people in poorer countries can't afford them, and it'll give us too many productivity and economic advantages over them". Meanwhile, here in 2015, everyone and his brother in India and China has a smartphone, and in fact third-world nations in general have done a much better job of pushing cellular technology to the masses than the US has, thanks to our telecom cartel which keeps service plan prices absurdly high.

xupybd 11y ago
I'm sorry I didn't mean to offend. My comment was not meant as a complaint, or a statement of fact, but as wild speculation. It was my hope that by voicing such wild speculation I'd learn something, and I have. In no way do I think it's a bad idea to seek better medical treatments ever, I just worried that it might further the gap between the haves and the have nots. If one solution creates another problem sometimes best solution can be to fix the new problem.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  Sorry if I was a bit harsh, but it just seemed to me that your comment seemed a bit like some schools of thought which basically amount to "no one should have any advantages over anyone else because it's not fair, so we should handicap everyone to the same level", but with nations instead of individuals. Or maybe "we shouldn't implement any new technologies until we can make them equally available to everyone worldwide". The thing is, if you look at new technologies, they've revolutionized things not only here in first-world nations, but in thirld-world nations too. Phones are a prime example of this: a few decades ago, there were lots of 3rd-world nations where they didn't have widely-deployed telephones. The US and Europe had them of course, because they had spend oodles of money over many decades installing twisted-pair copper lines everywhere, giving us 1950s-level phone tech. Then along came cellphones, and they were expensive at first, so only businesspeople (like realtors) and rich people bothered to pay for them. Should the US have held back deploying cellular infrastructure, in order to wait for the 3rd world countries to deploy basic twisted-pair POTS? Heck no. Because after a decade or so, the costs came down so much and phones got so cheap that the 3rd-world nations just went ahead and installed cell towers everywhere, and skipped landlines altogether. There's a lot of 3rd-world nations with better cellular coverage than a lot of places in America! It's a lot cheaper to install a cell tower to service hundreds of people than it is to install twisted-pair wiring to hundreds of homes, so that's exactly what they did: they took advantage of superior and less-expensive technology to catch up with the developed nations faster. It would have been stupid and wasteful for them to deploy the older POTS technology. It's like that with all technologies: costs get driven farther and farther down, and people in developing nations are able to take advantage of that, so those economies are improving rapidly, and the quality of life in those nations is rising greatly. The way I see it, this "gap between the haves and the have nots" is not a problem, and doesn't even exist, if you're looking at a worldwide scale. It is a problem here in the US because things are so corrupt and broken, but that's an entirely separate issue. For the most part, things are improving a lot for people in developing nations, with some obvious exceptions in the Middle East.

peter303 11y ago

Take AIDS for example. While drugs remain expensive in the USA on the order of a $1000 a month, they are less than $200 a year in many poor countries, thanks to Bush laws and Clinton Foundation. Still they are reaching less than half the infected people due to broken local governments and money shortages. However we have several million people living when they would have miserably died.